Heyla! We have a story about the Spear-Danes, from the old days when they were big and their kings showed their strength. There was one king, Shield Schefing, who stole many mead-benches from other tribes and terrified their leaders. At first, he was...
In this story the cockroach is the man, the curtain my girlhood, the creamed corn spilled by the mother wasted familial love, the father's zealotry a metaphor for emotional blindness.
In this story the radioactive dinosaur is the man, the city of Tokyo my body, and the...
You remember the mermaid makes a deal, her tongue evicted from her throat, and moving is a knife-cut with every step. This is what escape from water means. Dear Colleagues, you write, for weeks I’ve been typing this letter in the bright kingdom of my imagination....
Otherwise known as peewit, otherwise known as tew-it, otherwise known as Vanellus vanellus of the family Charadriidae, otherwise known as plain old lappy nestling itself in the till, otherwise known as diver found in its down in the center of some middle-of-nowhere, otherwise known as wailer,...
When the mirror swings open, it calls me obscenely shapely. A ruby wing slaps the glass. Soft smear. Since, like the drowning trick in reverse, I learned to float
outside myself from a certain, mostly bearable height, I watch terror push its anthem into...
The Inaccessible Island Rail lives in Atlantis, with two black feet on the black plateau. It might be slight, it might be shabby, but it knows what it knows.
Rain falls from the sky. The sun shines, within limits. Wind blows in from the furthest west. There...
Everything we do and say in patriarchy can be traced back to “Strangers in the Night.” Your faded jeans, my faint daytime smile. (Dazzling’s so expensive.) Bad Mailer novels; lose-money-quick schemes. A fortune in friendship, nevertheless. Beef farmers favor self-flesh awareness. (Or brittle in toffee...
First the people had to invent ladders. No one had ever seen a ladder. Once they had ladders they invented walls to climb over. Soon they realized it took two ladders to climb a wall. One to climb up one...
We gathered in a field southwest of town, several hundred hauling coolers and folding chairs along a gravel road dry in August, two ruts of soft dust that soaked into our clothes and rose in plumes behind us.
By noon we could discern their massive coils emerging...
If you go to bed hungry, your soul will get up and steal cold rice from the pot. Stop playing with fire before the moon rises or you’ll pee in your sleep.
Sweeping the floor after dark sweeps wealth and good fortune...
My mother the queen is dead. My father the king is old. He fumbles his cirque of gold And dreams of a year long fled. The young men stare at my face, But cannot meet my...
Sister and mother and diviner love, And of the sisterhood of the living dead Most near, most clear, and of the clearest bloom, And of the fragrant mothers the most dear And queen, and of diviner love the day And flame and summer and sweet...